The Catherine Opie exhibition opened as the artist’s first solo presentation in Scotland at the Royal Scottish Academy in Edinburgh on 8 August 2026, bringing nearly 80 portraits into dialogue with works from Scotland’s national collection.
Catherine Opie: To Be Seen spans more than three decades of photography concerned with visibility, intimacy and the ways communities represent themselves. Organised by the National Galleries of Scotland in collaboration with the artist, the exhibition arrives from London’s National Portrait Gallery and remains open in Edinburgh until 1 November 2026.
Portraiture as a form of recognition
The exhibition begins with Being and Having, Opie’s 1991 series of close portraits of friends from queer communities in Los Angeles. From there, it moves through photographs of families, children, surfers, high school football players, political crowds and artists. The selection also includes self-portraits in which Opie turns the same questions of identity, vulnerability and belonging towards herself.
Opie’s approach combines documentary attention with the formal authority of historical portraiture. Saturated backgrounds, direct poses and carefully controlled light can recall Hans Holbein and Baroque painting, while the subjects belong unmistakably to contemporary life. That tension gives the photographs their force. People who have often been marginalised or reduced to stereotypes occupy the frame with specificity and dignity.
The Edinburgh presentation adds another layer by placing Opie’s photographs alongside 13 portraits chosen from Scotland’s national collection. The arrangement asks visitors to consider who enters a public collection, whose image is preserved and how ideas of importance change over time. According to the National Galleries of Scotland, the works form new narratives around the people most commonly represented in art and those who remain unseen.
A major Edinburgh opening
The opening extends one of the most prominent photography exhibitions of the year into Scotland during Edinburgh’s busy festival season. It is also the first major museum exhibition of Opie’s work in the United Kingdom and her first solo presentation in Scotland. The Guardian named it its exhibition of the week as the Edinburgh edition began.
Critical responses to the earlier London presentation focused on the emotional range behind Opie’s clarity. A Guardian review described the exhibition as moving between performance and revelation, public identity and private care. These tensions are central to works that can be confrontational, humorous or tender without treating any community as a single story.
By opening To Be Seen in Edinburgh, the National Galleries of Scotland places questions of representation inside a building closely associated with the history of official art. Opie’s portraits do more than expand the list of people visible on museum walls. They propose that portraiture can create a record of connection, one in which family, friendship and chosen community become forms of history.
Featured image: Catherine Opie with Philip Taaffe, Madrid, 18 March 2016. Photograph by US Embassy Madrid, via Wikimedia Commons, licensed under CC BY 2.0. The image is a contextual portrait of the artist and does not depict the Edinburgh exhibition.